Friday, March 29, 2013

Merry Fridays

You might not know this, but I speak Spanish...I actually studied it all throughout college. I also studied French for a few semesters too, but lets not talk about that.

Anyhow, I went to Peru a couple years ago on a mission trip. We were in a small village off the Amazon River and part of our daily routine in each village included setting up a table where we could give families basic necessities.

Frequently, I would forget the correct word for something that I was trying to communicate so I'd circumvent my way around it by using other words to convey what exactly I mean. On one of the first days there, I could not remember the word for toothpaste. So I decided to get creative. Soap for your teeth pretty much conveys what toothpaste is, right? Yep, I was going to run with it.

So the word for soap in Spanish is jabón. For some crazy reason though, I was thinking it was sopa...which actually means soup. So all day, I mean all day long I told families time and time again "SOPA POR LOS DIENTES!"

The families would look at me a with a little peculiarity and then move on. It wasn't until the end of the day that another girl who understood what I was trying to say finally let me in on the fact that I was telling people, "SOUP FOR YOUR TEETH!" HA!

I don't blame them if they still think of me as the weird gringa (or gringita as the kids endearingly called me) who offered them soup for their teeth. I mean you use soup on your teeth everyday, right?

hahaha thanks shannon! another girl couldn't remember the word for breast-feeding at the doctor's stations (they had to ask because they could not give certain medicine that owuld affect women breastfeeding) so she kept asking "tiene leche aqui?" and pointing! haha!